I understand it was for a preemptive strike, but what did they serve to gain? Was it solely because the U.S. froze their assets after marching into manchuria? It just doesn't make sense to me as to why they would attack a stronger enemy.

Are there any good resources on Ashoka the emperor of India. I can't find any good ones in English.

from my admittedly brief research I see the plane took off from Tinian islands to the east of the Philippines but the return trip has a rumor of it landing in the Guiuan district in the Philippines.

I was wondering what the facts where surrounding the enola's flight path concerning the bombing of Hiroshima, as I've come across a few sources that disagree with each other.

I'm looking for a specific year or event to use to frame my research for a project.

I'm just starting a personal research project into the differences between modern small-scale farmers, and how it was done in the past. I am thinking pre-WWII is the time frame I want to compare, but I'm not a history expert, and want to know if a different timeline would give a more meaningful result? I cannot go back too far, as I intend to conduct personal interviews with people, so age is a limiting factor.

Is WWII a good line to draw in the sand? Or were the changes more significant either earlier or later than that time?

The Nazis invaded on a Sunday. Did this make a difference in the same way when the Japanese attacked Perl Harbor? Did the Soviets have weekends much like the USA? I know back then even in the states a lot people only got Sunday off work. Religion being one of the reasons for that. Since the Soviets had closed a lot of churches and did away with priests and ministers did Sunday make a difference in the attack?

Since their contribution was crucial to defeat the Aztecs, did the Spanish respect them more?

I've seen people recently saying things about Ronald Reagan committing treason as a presidential candidate, negotiating with the Iranians to keep holding the hostages until he was elected, etc. I've never seen anything like this before, so I was just wondering what merit this claim has.

I mean the white puffy ones.

Pirate ships and sails seem fairly resilient to hurricanes and hurricane power storms in Pirates of the Caribbean or Assassin's Creed 4, but I imagine that real cloth sails in a hurricane would get more wrecked than that. Especially when you think about the devastation that modern hurricanes have caused.

If I understand the process correctly, a bunch of monks roam the country looking for a child who they believe is a reincarnation of the last one. Have they ever gotten it wrong? Or has a Dalai Lama ever just turned out to be an asshole/useless/unwise or otherwise less than ideal, and if so how did the other monks react to the situation?

Can a Dalai Lama ever be "recalled"?

I mean 2 large ships like battleships or heavy cruisers at close range, or whatever close range is or ship to ship fighting.

I'm assuming it would be in the pacific in WW2 but I have no idea how I would go about finding that out.

As a Romanian, I've been curious as how Vlachs and Magyars managed to remain culturally/linguistical distinct from its slavic neighbours. Did they never get conquered, or how come all of their surrounding neighbours are Slavs but they managed to retain their identity? I am also interested in how vlachs/romanians managed to keep their roman heritage despite being separated from the empire for so long.

We all know what American life was like during the cold war. The propaganda, the promotion of the "American dream", the red scare, regular life was that of the middle class. Graduate college/get a job, get married, buy a house & have kids. What about the regular life of a say "middle class" representative of the Soviet Union? No doubt they went through hardships, not much to look forward to throughout life. Constant bombardment of propaganda, etc. But what was it like to wake up in the USSR one day, and carry on with the day?

It's said that if the Japanese had not surrended following the dropping of two atomic bombs at the end of WWII a bloody invasion of the islands would have been necessary.

But why couldn't Japan have simply been surrounded and subject to a quarantine, over time forcing a surrender (or at the least rendering Japan powerless and no longer a threat to the world)? Particularly if the projected deaths from an invasion were correct.

I was looking through Wikipedia and found my way to the Boxer Rebellion and noticed the US was one of the allies among the other great powers of the time. Japan was a member but was not considered a power until the Russo Japanese war.

However, I wondered when was the US considered a great power. Was it after the Civil War or before when the US annexed the much of the West coast?

I know the US was considered a superpower following WW2 so my thinking is wars are what usually pushes a country to that level of influence.

And bonus question. Did the British ever felt threatened by America's rise as they happened to be so close and shared a similar culture and historical ties?

I'm just asking because I watched Pan's Labyrinth and Enemy at the Gates, and they both involve that.

Any reason why?